El Paso County is joining the ACLU lawsuit challenging the legality of a new state law that would make it a state crime to illegally cross the border from Mexico.
The El Paso County Commissioners Court on Monday voted unanimously to fight the implementation of Senate Bill 4, which was signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott that same day. It’s expected to go into effect on March 5 unless it is stopped by the courts.
“El Paso has long been at the forefront of fighting against terrible immigration policy and I’m glad to see that we’re continuing to do so,” Commissioner David Stout said at the meeting. “Not only is this gonna have serious social implications, we’re probably gonna see increases in racial profiling and other terrible violations of people’s rights and violations of the Constitution.”
The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the ACLU and the Texas Civil Rights Project on Tuesday filed the lawsuit, which argues that the law violates the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution and bypasses federal law.
“Texas judges would be authorized — and in some cases, required — to order a person’s deportation regardless of whether a person is eligible to seek asylum or other humanitarian protections under federal law,” the ACLU said in a statement.
The plaintiffs include the county of El Paso, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center in El Paso and the American Gateways.
SB 4 is one of several border security initiatives approved by the legislature and signed into law by Abbott on Monday, including a bill that allocates more than $1.5 billion to expand the border wall.
SB 4 has been the most controversial because it would give state and local police authority to arrest undocumented immigrants anywhere in the state.
Supporters of the law say it would curb illegal immigration and enforce laws they say the federal government is not, while opponents say the law will lead to racial profiling and cost counties millions in local tax dollars to jail and prosecute those arrested.
“These laws will help stop the tidal wave of illegal entry into Texas, add additional funding to build more border wall, and crack down on human smuggling,” Abbott said in a statement issued after he signed SB 4 into law during a ceremony in Brownsville. He called the new laws a “transformative package of border security legislation.”
City, county officials on the bill
Local officials have also expressed concern that SB 4 doesn’t provide funding to offset the costs to jail and prosecute those arrested.
El Paso District Attorney Bill Hicks, who was not immediately available for comment, last month told El Paso Matters that state dollars from programs such as the governor’s Border Prosecution Unit and Operation Lone Star could provide funding for the additional workload that SB 4 does not.
Interviewed after a version of the bill was passed by the Texas House, Hicks said his job is to enforce the laws that get handed down but didn’t have any intention of “targeting any person or group of people.”
“If law enforcement were to present one of these cases to our office, we will evaluate it on a case-by-case basis,” he said at the time.
Stout said the law could cost El Paso County up to $50 million a year to jail those who are arrested under the law and up to $250 million to build an additional jail if one is needed.
City officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, but in a press conference on the migrant situation last week, El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser said that the local police department does not enforce immigration laws.
“The El Paso Police Department’s priority is safety and the safety of the community, safety of El Pasoans and also the safety of our asylum seekers,” he said. “They’re not here to enforce federal law.”
Leeser didn’t respond to follow-up questions from El Paso Matters after the press conference, and Deputy City Manager Mario D’Agostino said only that the city attorney’s office was “looking into” the bill.
Calling on the Department of Justice
U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, and other Democrats and members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus on Monday sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice asking it to pursue legal action to prevent the law from being enforced.
“The process of removing people from the United States is constitutionally a federal process and excluding federal authorities, including Department of Homeland Security agents trained in immigration law and federal judges trained to enforce it, will obstruct asylum cases, result in erroneous determinations, and put many people in danger,” the lawmakers wrote.
El Paso Democratic Congresswoman Veronica Escobar was among those who signed the letter.
Calling it “one of the country’s most extreme anti-immigrant laws,” a group of legal advocacy, immigrant rights and faith-based organizations across Texas and New Mexico also urged the DOJ to step in and called on the Biden administration to sue the state of Texas to “stop all efforts related to Operation Lone Star.”
Among those groups is Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center in El Paso, Texas, New Mexico and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.
“If SB 4 is implemented, countless U.S. citizens, mixed status households, and undocumented immigrants will be subjected to unlawful interrogations, searches, seizures, and arrests in violation of the Fourth Amendment based on how ‘foreign’ they look and how they behave,’” Las Americas Executive Director Marisa Limón Garza said in a press statement.
Sarah Cruz, a policy and advocacy strategist for immigrants’ rights with the ACLU of Texas, said the bill will instill fear in communities and people of color and further traumatize asylum seekers.
“The bill violates international and federal law and interferes with the asylum process, potentially causing further trauma and distress to people seeking asylum, including families and children,” she said in a press statement.
Melissa Lopez, executive director of Diocesian Migrant and Refugee Services, took it a step further.
“The State’s assault on migrants has resulted in far too many deaths. Countless people will lose their lives, end up in jail, and be deported before legal challenges invalidate the law,” she said in a statement.
Lopez added that communities and organizations such as the DMRS ensure that anyone impacted by the law has “access to legal representation, understand their rights, and know how to assert them when confronted by law enforcement.”
The post El Paso County joins ACLU in lawsuit challenging SB 4 appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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